An update on recent developments at JEB

Abstract

Having found my feet over the past months, I feel that it is time to provide you, the JEB readership, with an update on my vision and plans for the journal and some of the initiatives that I have been working on, together with JEB's Managing Editor Nicola (Nicki) Cook and the JEB editorial board.Overall, I see my mission as solidifying and growing the journal's reputation as an attractive outlet for quality research in evolutionary biology. We are starting from a good position, JEB is seen as a solid journal and we have a history of publishing important contributions to the field. Furthermore, there is a growing recognition among evolutionary biologists that publishing in society journals like JEB is the right thing to do, keeping funds within the community. But we are operating in an environment of growing competition-from new society journals, from commercial outfits that offer more glamour, but also from innovative and exciting new approaches to free and open scientific publishing. As a consequence, JEB and many other traditional journals in the field have seen a decline in submissions and published papers over recent years that we need to counter.My main focus of attention as Editor-in-Chief will therefore be to maintain and further grow the quality and long-term impact of articles published in JEB. This is paramount, as it underlies the reputation of our journal and the relevance of our published work for the evolutionary research community. Growing the quality and impact of JEB's output is a lofty goal, and there isn't an easy way of achieving it-certainly not quickly. But with the day-to-day help of Nicki and the support of the ESEB steering committee, we have been and are working on a range of initiatives that we believe will benefit the journal. Some of these reflect recommendations made by the JEB Advisory Group, a panel convened by ESEB that reported back last year, others are devised internally. I describe the most important changes and initiatives below.